The underlying oddity here is that the ship cannot be going fast enough to actually pass any stars like that - that would essentially mean going hundreds of thousands times faster than light, rather than just hundreds or thousands times as the plots imply. And never mind that the streaks appear even when ships do short warp hops within a single star system!

On the other hand, the streaking things do appear to be stars - at least some of them coalesce into stars when the ship drops from warp to impulse, and elongate from stars to streaks in the opposite case.

Perhaps the warp field is pulsating around the ship and distorting our view of the surrounding space, so that the same stars go "past" the ship again and again and again? And perhaps the pulsation is a bit faster during acceleration than during cruise, much like a locomotive engine might have its wheels slip and turn like mad for a few moments before they grip the rail and start moving the train relatively slowly.

The underlying oddity here is that the ship cannot be going fast enough to actually pass any stars like that - that would essentially mean going hundreds of thousands times faster than light, rather than just hundreds or thousands times as the plots imply. And never mind that the streaks appear even when ships do short warp hops within a single star system!

On the other hand, the streaking things do appear to be stars - at least some of them coalesce into stars when the ship drops from warp to impulse, and elongate from stars to streaks in the opposite case.

Perhaps the warp field is pulsating around the ship and distorting our view of the surrounding space, so that the same stars go "past" the ship again and again and again? And perhaps the pulsation is a bit faster during acceleration than during cruise, much like a locomotive engine might have its wheels slip and turn like mad for a few moments before they grip the rail and start moving the train relatively slowly.

Timo Saloniemi

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I thought about this the other day, and how if a ship really was going that fast, it would look like it was at impulse power, because there is no way they are passing that fast. Then I thought about something:
Could it be possible that an observer would see some kind of streak because he's travelling faster than c, while the light from the star would be going at c only?
Or may be, the warp effect that squezes the space around the ship would cause the stars to elongate. Sort of like how the ship is long when it first jumps? I don't know...

My take is that those are not stars, but instead were particulates of interstellar matter that the main deflector was moving to allow the ship's passage, but were still close enough to pass through the outer portions of the the ship's warp field/bubble.

Being caught in the deflector and passing through the warp field made them visible.

In only one TNG episode (WNOHGB) do we see the Enterprise at warp from the side, from a distance. And the extent of the "streaking stars" there could be explained by size of the ship's warp field. It's fullest extent could reach for miles (stronger near the hull).

The depiction of space travel in Trek has always bothered me. The "warp stars" zoom past far too fast, but worse is when the stars flutter past at sub-light velocities like tiny dust motes (worst offender: the intro to ENT's "These Are the Voyages")

I far prefer the depiction in the last movie - still stars and a moving ship at sublight, angry zappy blue warp fields surrounding the ship at FTL speed.

Add to Timo's explanation that anything going faster than the speed of light can't see anything behind it (because the light can't catch up) - so in fact, the streaks behind the ship shouldn't even be visible if they're starlight. I always take it to be an artefact of travelling with a warp field, some kind of radiation caused by the interaction of realspace and subspace (possibly tachyon-related).

I just assume that the warp field makes a crazy visual distortion that makes stars appear to move faster than they are actually moving. The stars are swirling around the warp bubble (that the ship creates) in a weird, illogical manner where some stars that have already passed the vessel are visible in the front of the ship, and vice versa.

It's just a visual clusterfuck of stars due to light distortion from the artificial space-time bubble created by the warp engines, and thank god that the Enterprise has sensors to navigate during warp, or else it'd just make everyone dizzy trying to figure out which direction to set a course in.

Or something. I've had a glass of wine and I feel like my brain is trapped in a warp bubble at this very moment.

I just assume that the warp field makes a crazy visual distortion that makes stars appear to move faster than they are actually moving. The stars are swirling around the warp bubble (that the ship creates) in a weird, illogical manner where some stars that have already passed the vessel are visible in the front of the ship, and vice versa.

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I think some sort of optical illusion would be absolutely expected - after all , we can't even watch the spokes on a wheel turning beyond a certain speed without them seeming to run backwards, and that's much slower that lightspeed. The human eye (and brain) was just not built to interpret FTL velocities.

I just assume that the warp field makes a crazy visual distortion that makes stars appear to move faster than they are actually moving. The stars are swirling around the warp bubble (that the ship creates) in a weird, illogical manner where some stars that have already passed the vessel are visible in the front of the ship, and vice versa.

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I think some sort of optical illusion would be absolutely expected - after all , we can't even watch the spokes on a wheel turning beyond a certain speed without them seeming to run backwards, and that's much slower that lightspeed. The human eye (and brain) was just not built to interpret FTL velocities.